The Sleeper Wakes

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Title:     The Sleeper Wakes
Author: Walt Mason [More Titles by Mason]

Perhaps you've heard of old Tom Tinkle, who went to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, and slept for thirty years; he woke the other day, and gazing around him on the sights amazing, his soul was filled with fears.

"What world is this?" he asked, in terror; "what life, of which I'm now a sharer? What globe do we infest? Oh, is it Saturn, Mars or Venus? How many planets are between us and good old Mother Earth? What mighty bird is that a-soaring--I seem to hear its pinions roaring, it scoots along so fast? Old Earth, with all her varied features, had no such big, outlandish creatures around, from first to last."

"It is an airship, Thomas Tinkle," I answered him; "a modern wrinkle, just one of many score which were by scientists invented to make the people more contented since you began to snore."

I told him of the wireless system and other wonders--he had missed 'em, since he was sound asleep; of submarines which sink and travel serenely o'er the mud and gravel beneath the raging deep.

"You can't convince me," said the waker, "that 'tis the earth--you are a faker, and deal in fairy tales; no man could soar away up yonder, like some blamed albatross or condor on metal wings or sails. And as for sending long dispatches from Buffalo clear down to Natchez, the same not being wired, if that's done here it's not the planet whereon I lived when mortals ran it; your stories make me tired. But what are these rip-snorting wagons? We must be in the land of dragons! I never saw the like! So riotously are they scooting, so wildly are they callyhooting they fairly burn the pike!"

I told him they were merely autos whose drivers lived up to their mottoes that speed laws are in vain; and other miracles amazing with delicate and pointed phrasing I started to explain. I told of triumphs most astounding, of things which should be quite confounding to resurrected men; but in the middle of my soaring I heard old Thomas Tinkle snoring--he'd gone to sleep again.

[The end]
Walt Mason's poem: Sleeper Wakes

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